Use Other Platforms to Market Your Novels Without Social Media

This is the seventh in a series of blog posts about marketing for fiction authors without using social media.

Serial Fiction Websites

I will admit upfront that I have minimal experience on Wattpad and all I’ve done on RoyalRoad is read a few chapters. However, I’ve heard of a lot of indie authors who love posting their books on these types of serial fiction websites to gain a large following.

In a sense, it’s a lot like blogging your book, except on someone else’s website. You’re entering into a rich, reader-centric world and offering free content, and people who really love your work will buy your books and sign up for your newsletter.

The structure of serial fiction also pretty much guarantees to hook your reader, because each chapter ends on a cliffhanger and they have to read the next chapter or die waiting for you to post it. Readers with favorite stories on RoyalRoad and Wattpad (and other such websites) can get really passionate about those books.

The readers also enjoy giving feedback as they’re reading your book, which can be helpful for new writers.

These serial fiction websites are an excellent place for you to showcase your writing and your stories to a hugely wide audience, and the ones who like your work are your fans.

On the flipside, these websites have thousands of stories, and getting your story in front of readers can be a challenge. But I view it the same way as my knitting posts. I don’t need everyone on Ravelry to visit my pattern—I just need a few. There are thousands, maybe millions of users searching for patterns, so there’s a larger pool of people who might be looking for the type of pattern I blogged about. Even a small percentage of those people gets me a steady number of hits to my blog post every month.

If serial fiction is right for you, you can post a book chapter by chapter on a serial fiction website as a means of making more readers aware of you, and some of them might turn out to be fans.

Article Submissions:

Nonfiction authors are encouraged to reach out to local groups as possible marketing avenues. When I was starting out, what I did was reach out to local publications.

I got an article in a small Asian American journal just before my debut novel released (it was contemporary romance under my Camy Tang pen name). In this instance, the nonfiction article might have helped get my name out to readers in the Asian American community because my website was in my byline, and the credit looked great in my author bio when I submitted a novel proposal to Zondervan.

I also wrote articles for small online writing magazines, but I don’t think it really helped market my fiction.

Writing Contests:

Similarly, I entered short stories in small writing contests such as on Writing.com and other small writing communities, so I could put in my author bio that my short stories had won contests. It only got my name out to other writers, so I can’t say it worked as a marketing tactic to promote my fiction.

Fiction Magazines:

If I were to do it again, I might not have focused so much on writer’s magazines and nonfiction articles, because aside from bulking up my author bio for my book proposal to Zondervan, I’m not sure they actually contributed to my author brand and getting readers interested in my novels. If a fiction author is going the indie publishing route, the nonfiction articles in her byline aren’t going to be as valuable.

Instead, I would have submitted more short stories to online fiction magazines and literary journals. I had a few of my stories published on online fiction e-zines, and not only was that good experience for me, but it also got my writing in front of the readers of the e-zines.

I admit I haven’t done a ton of research recently, but I think that Writer’s Digest has a subscription where it lists all active magazines open to submissions of both fiction and nonfiction.

Also, there are tons of small online fiction websites and magazines, you just have to look for them. Then again, if they’re small and hard to find, they may not reach a lot of readers.

The reason I don’t submit short stories now to promote my book is because I don’t really have time to write short stories, I’d rather write my full novels. Also, the majority of short stories I write these days are vignettes involving the characters in my series, and so they’re only of interest to my superfans who want more from my series characters. For example, I recently wrote a short story for my Patreon that took place years before the main series, but it detailed how two of the major protagonists met.

I mention this because you might be in the same boat—the short stories you write might tie too closely to your current series and wouldn’t be appropriate for a literary journal or fiction magazine.

Book Award Contests:

I personally haven’t submitted my books to many award contests—I’m too thin-skinned for that and the stress would drive me crazy—but I have many indie author friends who submit their books to many contests and win lots of awards.

If their book places well, it gets them visibility when the results are posted, and if they win, they gain the accolades accompanying the award.

The problem is that contests cost money—I only just submitted a book to the Christy awards this year for the first time, and it was $175 per book. Other contests are cheaper, but if you enter several, then the costs add up.

But the accolades are pretty nice, and it’s a guaranteed way to get your book in front of readers. If the contest does a good job of promoting the results, you can potentially get noticed by even more people who hadn’t heard of you before.

Podcasting:

Full disclosure: I have very little experience with podcasting, although I took Thomas Umstattd’s course on being a podcast guest.

I know there probably are podcasts featuring Christian fiction authors, but there are very few, and I simply didn’t have the mental bandwidth to search for them and pitch to them.

However, I’ve heard of other fiction authors who start their own podcasts, and it’s not just interviewing other fiction authors in their genre about their books. Two or three other authors have podcasts where they narrate fiction stories from other authors as well as themselves (obviously they get permission from the other authors). This is a neat idea because the podcast is essentially an anthology of short stories, and the author bios promote the full-length novels of the different authors.

The podcasts are limited by genre—fantasy, or dystopian, or YA. So a fiction author who likes narrating could possibly start their own podcast narrating stories in their genre, which would promote their own books as well as other similar authors. I’m certain they could find tons of authors in the same genre who would love to submit a short story to be narrated/featured on a podcast.